60 seconds with Peter Morley, our 15,000th member

The Encore community has been growing at lightning speed recently, so to celebrate we caught up with our 15,000th member, tenor and Early Music specialist Peter Morley…

Why sing?

Singing is the simplest and purest form of music-making, and the most accessible – anyone can do it, you don’t need any special kit. You get to perform some of the pinnacles of human achievement in any art form. Choral singing in particular can be a very social and sociable activity. It’s good for mental and physical health. So for me it’s more a question of why would you not sing.

Best gig ever?

Lots of them. Going back a long way, playing Tchaikovsky 6 with Leeds Youth Orchestra in La Madeline in Paris to an ovation from the packed audience was special. It was also on the final day of the Tour de France (Bjarne Riis won), so Paris was in full-on cycle fever mode. More recently, the Richafort Requiem and other works inspired by Josquin with the Renaissance Singers on the day after the Brussels airport bombing was one of those hairs-on-the-back-of-your-neck moments.

Bursting out of a giant crêpe paper parcel, with pink feather boa and glittered up, to sing happy birthday to the long-serving manager of a top London hotel was pretty fabulous.

If you could perform with one musician or band from any era, who would it be, and what would you play?

What a question … the obvious answer would be J.S. Bach, but I’d probably be too overawed to speak. Otherwise Jordi Savall is pretty close to God. As to what we’d play – whatever he suggested, I suppose!

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